Movie pros:

1. Excellent freaking soundtrack by Dario Marianelli
   
2. Portrays Lizzie Bennet as louder, messier, & more confident which is a more modern and unique take on the character.
   
3. Pretty damn impressive visuals and cinematography (particularly the Lizzie on top of the cliff scene…breathtaking shot)
   
4. Darcy and Bennet have soooo much tension and chemistry. Especially in the ballroom scenes or the proposal. Just way more believable as a relationship. Especially since compared to book Darcy, Macfadyen’s is pretty tame & more likable.
   
5. Relationship with Lizzie and her father is so lovely and portrayed really nicely in this movie.
   

Movie cons:

1. Rushes thru the entire story of Wickham & makes him a bland and nothing character by just talking about what he did “wrong” & not showing how he basically tried to groom Georgiana & other girls. (Yeah I guess they showed him & Lydia coming back to visit but…it just felt so cheap & rushed considering they barely show why Darcy hates Wickham so much).
   
2. Doesn’t do the greatest job of showing why Darcy has to change by making him so fumbly and awkward the entire movie. He’s just kind of standoffish…& antisocial? Really doesn’t come off as super pompous or full of himself like he was in the book or Colin Firth tbh. And yeah in the proposal scene he starts insulting Jane’s fam & whatever but it’s all talk. For most of the movie he has not shown that attitude towards them AT ALL. He doesn’t come off as rude or snobby more just shy. They just kinda tell us he broke up Jane & Bingley but fail to show the impact of it as well as the series did.
   
3. Doesn’t fully address many flaws if at all of Lizzie Bennet & makes her a perfect superhuman who is wronged by everyone else. Like the whole point of the book is that she and Darcy are both wrong and misguided just to different degrees. She also acts really unrealistically extroverted and unrestrained for a woman of her time even tho she’s a progressive, feminist character anyways. I love Keira Knightley but her as Lizzie was a bit too modernized imho.
   
4. Makes the Bennet family dynamic kind of watered down bc in the book the whole conflict about their family is that they’re seen as silly and embarrassing (especially Lizzie’s younger sisters). There’s barely any scenes about this & Darcy just kind of mentions it without us seeing more about Lizzie’s conflicted feelings with her fam. Really doesn’t do much justice to the whole social commentary of Austen’s book by barely showing how people perceive Lizzie’s family. Also Jane & Lizzie have little to no chemistry as sisters and have like 2 good scenes together.
   
5. Jane and Bingley’s relationship really isn’t done much justice. There’s maybe two big scenes with them and that’s it. Super boring in the movie when it’s meant to be such a huge plot point.
   Series pros:
   
6. Really good casting for Lizzie and Jane Bennet, their bond as sisters is really believable and book-accurate. I especially love the scene where Lizzie and Jane are in the garden together and each is equally trying to console the other.
   
7. The whole Bennet family dynamic is given enough attention and flaws to show why Lizzie has such conflicting feelings about them and how it affects other people’s perceptions of her. (Especially in terms of the mother & younger sisters 😂)
   
8. The Bennet Father has way more of a personality besides stoic & lightly supportive as he was in the film. He legit takes responsibility for his lack of caution and care with Lydia after she runs away and admits to Lizzie and the others that he was wrong.
   
9. The Bingley sisters are straight out of mean girls and are way bitchier to Lizzie and her family which WORKS so much better as social commentary and in turn, motivation for Darcy to improve.
   
10. Charlotte Lucas has way more of a personality that makes sense with Lizzie Bennet as her friend. They’re both very calm, cool, and intelligent which is more fitting. It also gives time for her to explain why she married Mr. Collins and that she’s satisfied with not marrying for love. In the movie she’s just kinda nice, disappears for most of the time, & then shows up again like “yea I just need his money you don’t GET it Lizzie!!”
    
11. The whole conflict with Wickham is really expertly carried out as he seems charming at first but is developed into a careless two-timer. I wanted to punch him which meant the actor did a great job.
    
12. Music is great and plays a noticeable role in the story several times.
    
13. Bingley and Jane’s relationship is given a lot of attention and clearly shows rather than TELLS the emotional damage this has on Jane.
    
14. Scenery switches up a lot and is very accurate to each location the characters go to in the book.
    

Series cons:

1. Lizzie and Darcy have zero chemistry and their relationship feels very wooden and minimal. I’m sorry I love those two in King’s Speech but Firth looked wayyy too stiff and unfeeling as Darcy. And I know that’s the point, but I just couldn’t buy those two were in love.
   
2. The episodes are really slow-paced and long which means more story is represented but also fairly hard to sit through even for former readers. A lot of the pacing is pretty dull at first especially.
   
3. Bingley and Darcy had no chemistry as friends and I couldn’t buy they were close at all. Way better bond in the movie.
   

Series pros-cons ratio: 9:3
Movie pros-cons ratio: 5:5

This is an abridged version for Reddit. For the full version on Substack, click here

The Challenge

Here's the Back on Track Video Challenge: Every single day for the next 3 months, you will open a self-improvement video of your liking in a new tab. It could be about goals, discipline, fitness, spirituality, anything really that you know is good for you. You needn't even watch it, opening is enough, because consistency matters more than intensity. The goal is to hit the target at least 80% of the time. And I promise you, you will be surprised by the amount of motivation and inspiration that will empower you in the upcoming days to come. This is your life and this is the perfect time.
For this reason I also created a video playlist for you, myself and others. You needn't watch every single one of them, but I am certain, there are gems and treasures to be found which will help you get back on track. I highly recommend using a habit tracker, currently I recommend the Loop Habit tracker which I have been using for years and which has helped me achieve impressive consistency and discipline. Also it is possible to participate in this challenge with a different medium such as books or audio books, but I recommend sticking to a single medium rather than leaping from one to the other.
If you like, please do share a video in this thread that you think is a great contribution to the playlist.
Have a nice day.

Hey there,
as far as I understood the previous articles and interviews about the DLC, they want to add a Sekiro-like leveling system. How do you guys think this pairs up with NG difficulty? Will the DLC still be way harder on higher NGs? Currently with my main at NG+3, and I honestly don't know if I am able to tackle the DLC at this level... But at the same time, I started a new character for that purpose, but I just reached Liurnia and I honestly have zero motivation to finish that character... all those annoying side bosses, the whole final half after Leyndell... It just doenst sound fun to me to rush through that game until the DLC release in June, because at that time I'd be so burnt out by the "not so great" elements of the game (lets just face the weakpoints of the game) that I wont be able to enjoy the DLC anymore...

Hey beginner guitarists! 👋 Are you ready to rock out and level up your guitar skills? Here are some quick and easy tips to set you on the path to guitar greatness:

1. Start with the Basics: Master the fundamental chords (like Em, G, C, D) and practice switching between them smoothly.
2. Rhythm is Key: Focus on developing a solid sense of rhythm by practicing with a metronome or backing tracks.
3. Practice Consistently: Dedicate a few minutes each day to practice. Even short daily sessions can lead to significant progress over time.
4. Learn Simple Songs: Start learning easy songs that you love. It's a fun way to stay motivated and apply what you've learned.

Let's get it! 🎶 Feel free to send me a private chat if you have questions and I got you. Happy strumming! 🎸✨

Hey beginner guitarists! 👋 Are you ready to rock out and level up your guitar skills? Here are some quick and easy tips to set you on the path to guitar greatness:

1. Start with the Basics: Master the fundamental chords (like Em, G, C, D) and practice switching between them smoothly.
2. Rhythm is Key: Focus on developing a solid sense of rhythm by practicing with a metronome or backing tracks.
3. Practice Consistently: Dedicate a few minutes each day to practice. Even short daily sessions can lead to significant progress over time.
4. Learn Simple Songs: Start learning easy songs that you love. It's a fun way to stay motivated and apply what you've learned.

Let's get it! 🎶 Feel free to send me a private chat if you have questions and I got you. Happy strumming! 🎸✨

I’m seeking a Creativity, Arts, and Wellness Accountability Partner, and a Life, Entrepreneurial, and Goals Accountability Partner.
Creativity, Arts, and Wellness Accountability Partner: writing, arts, crafts, spirituality, wellness, psychology and journaling are areas of focus and improvement.
Let’s discuss and develop strategies to overcome perfectionist tendencies that might stem from procrastination.
Let’s compare and contrast methods to successfully replace bad habits with good/positive/healthy habits.
I'm looking for the best combination of virtual (text, phone calls, Skype or Telegram) and local (NYC) on-site Accountability Partners.
My ideal AP is late 30s to late 40s, female or male, creative, entrepreneurial, and practices weekly wellness and self-help.
Do you journal, meditate, workout? What have you been doing, what are you doing to show up for yourself, first?
I'm available two or three times a week for check-ins, for sixty-minute strategy sessions to keep us afloat, focused, and motivated. I expect the same from you. Nonnegotiable.
Do you have the energy, personality, and stamina to support and encourage someone else even if you were to temporarily stumble?
Please don’t contact me to (1) help you wake up or get to sleep on-time, (2) to help you perform daily functions not listed above.
Accountability Partners are voluntary and mutually-rewarding. You must be committed to the process for at least three months to see results.
If you're looking and ready for someone to help keep you honest about what you say you want and need in your life, send a Reddit email with your age, location, availability three weekdays and one weekend afternoon, what you're working on that you're seeking an AP, and why you'd be possible good/great fit as my AP.

Salam guys, I have this problem, that my wife has told me she doesnt want to be with me. She has said this a couple of times throughout the last six months, and has had mood swings but I really don’t know what to do. So our problem started around November after our engagement party, where she told me she doesn’t want to be with me, and her reason was that she meant that she was not a good wife for me, with this she means that she could not fulfill my rights as her husband and she told me I deserved better etc. but then a couple of days later we fixed out problems and everything were all right. Then after one week she said the same thing again, this time we didn’t speak for one and a half month and she removed me from every social media, we don’t live together yet we only have had our nikkah done. After one and a half month we again fixed our problems and everything was going great, we spoke about marriage and about moving in together soon etc. but then a couple of weeks later again she said she doesn’t want to be with me, and she is not happy with me, she doesn’t like me and can’t see a future with me although she was very in love with me as well and we both found each other by our own will so no force. Now we haven’t spoken for around 2 months now, and she says that she doesn’t want to be with me. I really don’t know what to do, to be honest I’ve really done everything for her, I am a very loving and caring person, yes of course no one is perfect I sometimes get mad easily and have my faults, but o haven’t done anything to lead to this. I’ve changed a lot for her and everything she didn’t like I immediately changed, and also she herself has told me a lot of times that she was proud and happy that I changed a lot for her for the better, but other than that I am extremely caring, affectionate and loving. I know materialistic things doesn’t mean a lot, but I also always buy expensive gifts and I have always prioritized that she had everything she ever dreamed of. I have all my focus to her and was there for her all the time, I also made an savings account for her, and have made a lot of sadaqa in her name, I have made a water well in her name, I really have tried to be the best that I could to keep her happy and treat her like a queen, and that’s why me and all of her family are very confused as how this could be that she all of sudden doesn’t like me and can’t stand to see my face, when she was so happy and in love with me also. her family all are on my side because she doesn’t have a valid reason to not like me or be with me anymore. She says that there is nothing wrong with me, and I haven’t done anything but she doesn’t know why but she doesn’t want to be with me. We have made everything from start in an Islamic way, from the first time we spoke and to our nikkah, we held a small engagement party with music etc but this was not our wish - it was only for the purpose of our families. I am really confused and very sad to be honest, I really like this girl from the bottom of my heart and since our nikkah there has just been a different kind of happiness not only in my heart, but also my family and her family this was really more than I could ever dream of. My mother in law said she thinks someone made sihr on her so that her heart has turned stonecold towards me and my family. I have spend every day the last 2 months and every night in Ramadan I prayed tahajud for her and for allah to fix our marriage. I really need some motivational or some advice from you guys I hope you can help a brother inshallah. If you read all the way to here, may Allah give you every thing you ever dreamed of and may Allah calm your heart, give you good health and jannah inshallah.

I wish I was alone in the world any jobs or places I can travel too to avoid the world forever had a great life but hate my friends now adays even though I had great memories with them they turned into what everyone told me they would be people that use me and the ones who don’t aren’t motivated to do anything in life I have zero direction and I would love advice to move on past my current life socially I always wanted to be a fire watch tower ranger like that game fire watch but something like that is as dreamy as being on a island middle of the pacific being a light house worker but I don’t think it’s possible with the knowledge I have but I’d love advice that gives me a direction with freedom and privacy like I described I just wanna be alone and die alone but I needa have a dog that’s it any advice dog parts is partial a joke also sorry for my bad English and complaining also don’t know where to post this I’m not that good of a redditor

my dream has always been to work with animals but i've never been sure id make it. I've been dealing with a lot of mental health issues for the majority of my life and never once planned on making it out like to my gcses or attend college but now thats changed. I kind of have a plan, i know what GCSE grades i need, what college to go to and when in university to study zoology however due to the fact i am still struggling with my issues it has caused me a great amount of memory loss, constantly being tired and overly anxious unable to concentrate i have missed YEARS of learning by not being entirely all there. I am trying to get back on medication and back into therapy, what i need to know if anyone in veterinary care understands? were you always good at school, getting amazing grades or did you struggle? feel like a massive idiot? but managed to learn and remember things? obviously you go to school for years to learn everything you need to but rn its impossible for me to pass. Without passing i wont be able to do any of that at least not any time soon. I need Grade 7 biology, physics and chemistry along with maths, english and a couple others. I have a year (im aware i could always do my GCSE's years from now but id like to get my life sorted cuz currently i feel i dont have years left of my life). I'll be doing them around May 2025, do you have any tips or advice for me? how to study, what to do to look after myself and etc? im not looking for mental health help, i js feel alone in this. Was it always easy? as a child were you amazing at science. I feel i am meant to be working with animals, id love to save them especially wild animals but it feels impossible, i need hope and motivation to get me through this. Not only for me to stay alive and fight through my struggles but so many animals need help and it'd give me purpose knowing i have a chance to save them. I hope this makes sense. Thank you !!

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

Disclaimer: I am brand new to this sub and if I should post this elsewhere please let me know. This sub was suggested for me so thought I’d drop it here first.
When I was younger I was a bit of a slacker and not super motivated. But I slept well and really didn’t have awful dreams. Then one day anxiety kicked in and I started working super hard and I learned to carry a lot of anxiety. My hard work paid off and I was making a lot of money and had a fiancée a house all of it.
But then my company got in trouble with the DOJ I was laid off, brought back, laid off again. I’m the midst of all this my dad died, I had to have back surgery and now have permanent sciatic nerve damage and my fiancée left. I had to sell my house and move back home until I can buy or build another place. So in the space of about 3 years I gained it all and then lost it all. I’m very depressed. Even before all this tho I began having nightmares every single night and just weird dreams about my past. Either I’m me in my own past reliving things or people from the past are in my dreams in weird situations. A lot of the times I dream I’m back in school even tho I graduated college and when I did the school dreams stopped for a while.
The last dream I had was myself and two of my best friends who are now dead were with me in this massive like mall. Tons of people were in there. The friend who died first got left behind while the friend who committed suicide about 3 years ago now went into a restroom. I thought well I could use the bathroom as well and as I’m using it everything turns black and white with cobwebs everywhere and literally everybody in the place had disappeared into thin air and I was completely alone and lost in this massive complex.
I had a great childhood even tho we hit some rough times when my mother was laid off. We never really recovered from that. But I had loving family who were always together. Still, I can sense these dreams stem from trauma.
Why are my dreams exclusively about the past and full of people from the past and who would I talk to as far as a professional that could help me cope so I don’t have these dreams anymore? Thanks.

10 days sober… the longest period I have abstained from alcohol in a very long time. I hesitate to call it a streak because I aim for this to be my permanent lifestyle going forward.
The Positives:

1. I am feeling incredibly motivated throughout the day. No longer do I find myself passing out drunk, wasting time, and disrupting my sleep routine.
2. Surprisingly, I have not lost weight despite consuming minimal junk food and no liquid calories (only water, coffee, and pre-workout supplements for energy). However, I believe I look better in the mirror. It’s possible that I have gained muscle mass and lost some fat, though these changes may not yet be reflected on the scale. I will remain patient, prioritize my sobriety, and continue on this path.
3. My eyes appear much healthier - wide open and bright instead of bloodshot and tired.
4. There is a noticeable reduction in puffiness in my face, particularly in the cheeks.

The Bad(temporary):

1. Sleep was very hard some nights. I would get only 5-6 hours of deep sleep, then I would wake up unable to go back to sleep. However, I do feel better energy throughout the day compared to when I was drinking.
2. Withdrawals were intense. I quit cold turkey but experienced severe symptoms such as shaky hands, anxiety, dry mouth, strange bloating (especially in the lower stomach area), and an emotional roller coaster.

I am pleased with the results so far, especially mentally. I feel like I am on a completely different level - much more positive, with long-term thinking, and more in touch with the world around me. I just cleaned my apartment, got a nice haircut, and am now enjoying a good cup of coffee before my workout and a 10km walk.
One day at a time, we will get there. This community has been a great help to me, and you all motivate me to keep going.

I'm working on a book-length project related to technology and society. I've found local writing groups for fiction and poetry but no groups that focus on or include non-fiction. More than anything I'm looking for a situation where people are accountable to one another to write and share - motivation, audience. Constructive criticism is great too.

Wanted to jot down my feedback regarding S4 so far, from the position of an arpg sweat that grew up on D2. Some of my opinions will be direct opposites of what casuals are feeling, which is okay and I think there is a middle ground that can satisfy all player types in most areas.
Leveling
I was initially quite disappointed by the new leveling experience. Helltides are vastly improved and a lot more fun, but it still gets dull doing effectively only that for 50 levels. I think this is a minor issue as future season campaigns will probably break up the monotony enough to keep it fresh.
Personally I'm not a fan of making leveling faster, I enjoyed the original 1-100 experience but as the game adds more post-100 content it'll smooth out the process of getting there which is understandable.
The biggest issue leveling has is Haedrig's Gift (Iron Wolves & Season Journey caches). One of the big appeals of playing a fresh season is starting from scratch and pathing efficiently through the awkward parts of the early game where you don't have all your powers, and experiencing that growth and the big power spikes when you find the right item along the way. Developing mastery of a chosen class should include knowing how to be efficient without legendary powers, and it's another layer of skill that is fun to improve.
Giving everyone a starter kit toward a solid leveling build directly goes against that, and even makes me less interested in looking at loot since I've already been handed a big burst of power in the first 10 minutes. In a season all about the new loot, that's a big misstep in my eyes. Renown skill points already did this to some degree and it felt very jarring, but it's getting to a stage where it can't be ignored now. Stop solving the problems for me, the problems are the engaging part.
Haedrig's Gift-style mechanics simply need to go - LET ME FEEL WEAK so that I can enjoy being strong.
Loot & Crafting systems
The itemization rework is a big step in the right direction. I was initially concerned with greater affixes being some step in the direction of old D3 ancient items but so far I haven't felt it to be too grating because of the many rng elements involved in hitting several GA's and having them be the right ones. I hope iteration on stats will continue and that more fun or build-altering options will be added going forward.
Tempering is a huge win in my book, and the best new system introduced. The choices are interesting, grow in power as you approach the endgame and serve to let you specialize your character's/build's unique identity. I sincerely hope you double down on this and consider working in seasonal tempering affixes that offer interesting options to the current pool while not being so strong as to invalidate the base affix pool.
Masterworking hasn't made a huge impression personally, the % based stat increases aren't enough of a carrot to make me want to grind them out religiously.
My biggest issue with this iteration on loot is the obsoleting of item tiers. Rares are made functionally useless by having one less affix than legendaries, a complete 180 of the original plan of having them be potentially stronger than legendaries in the right circumstances, and even legendaries without greater affixes become completely pointless beyond salvaging for codex or selling for gold at some point in your journey.
I think there's a big opportunity to keep rares interesting throughout the whole journey even in their current state - what if they were the templates for runewords come the expansion? The power tradeoff of losing a regular affix and greater affix chances in favor of a unique new power could be fun to figure out as a player.
The Pit, and the great question of why?
When I started doing pit runs, I was immediately hit by the realization that although leveling had been shortened to get me here, I've run out of carrots to chase. Yeah, every item on my character could have the perfect stats and be masterworked to absolute perfection, but why? What am I working towards?
The obvious tie-in to greater rifts is a per-class, per-groupsize leaderboard. Now I have something to strive towards and it acts as a big motivation to perfect my gear so that I can compete. It'll also be engaging to more people than it was in D3 since infinite power scaling doesn't sour the experience for solo/legit players after two weeks of a season launching. But not everyone likes to push leaderboards, and even for those that do, creating some friction and diversity in what to focus on keeps the game fun for longer. In the end, I just want a good reason to keep pushing, and that looks different for everyone which is why we need options that aren't all instanced scaling difficulty ladders.
Trading
You expanded trading this season which is great - now give us a modern trading system that solidifies it as a real endgame option for those that want to, without taking the focus away from farming your own gear.
While I personally would like an auction house along with some sort of trading square area in cities where trade chat is auto-enabled, I recognize that it comes with concerns of what the optimal route to player power becomes. So if we want to maintain that bit of friction to make it a viable route, but still not overpowered in terms of loot acquisition, a system like PoE's website could facilitate face-to-face trading while also acting as part of the solution to the issue players are facing with socializing and grouping up. A lot of the people I made long-lasting bonds with from the D2 days I met through trading, either in-game or on third party sites.
Legitimizing trading as a secondary focus for those that want to could help diversify and strengthen your endgame offerings while also helping the social aspect of the game, which is sorely lacking. What it also does is create an interesting bit of friction for your character vs. account level of power and wealth. Suddenly, a unique item I found could be immediately useful to me if I made a Druid, but it could also strengthen my Sorceress if I sold it and spent the resources on masterworking or new template items. I'm predominantly a solo player and don't want grouping/coop to be shoved in my face, but not having a decent option to seek out people to play with in-game is a big miss for those that want it.
D4 with accessible trading and a diverse enough item pool to where I can buy and sell Uniques, Legendaries both for their stats aswell as their aspect creating interesting value breakpoints, rares or other runeword template items or even set items down the line would be a dream for a lot of players - and with the correct implementation, only a small tie-in or completely unnecessary for those that don't want to focus on it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think S4 is a large step in the right direction with some backwards stumbles here and there. I, along with many others, want nothing more than to main this game as the moment-to-moment gameplay is spectacular along with the art and music, but to be able to do that the endgame offerings need to have more depth and be more varied.

Sorry in advance for my bad writing.
I had a bad interaction with a more logical thinker and I was wondering if the problem is their logical personality or if it’s just them being an asshole. Similarly some people have disorders but it doesn’t make them bad people. But I think as infp’s we naturally care more about emotions and how others “feel,” so I sometimes find things disrespectful or manipulative that a logical person cannot really perceive. Sometimes they play with innuendo, ego and informal bashing without even realizing it, and they hide behind and are blinded by facts and literal understandings, unaware of their emotional “shadow” impact.
I find this is frustrating about being an infp. We are very conscious and perceptive of the underlying language of “feelings.” I hate it because other types can just brush things off, live without justifying but we are plagued by moral inconsistencies, and underlying pain. We are deeply in touch with feeling over the simple act of doing, and while I think it has it’s importance, it is undeniably frustrating. But I think even more logical personality types engage in all the same human emotions but aren’t as consciously aware that they engage in them and thus have a more implicit impact and less conscious control and awareness of their feelings.
It’s annoying because I was in a situation where this logical woman was technically being manipulative and I was trying to explain it to her, but she kept saying “name one thing I said” and I’d instantly go blank. She would then point at a literal problem, like “you yourself said you were ignorant so I’m only stating a fact.” When of course she took it out of context. I think it was manipulative but she didn’t realize she was doing it. And I’ve seen many people do this. Some will say “I’m not insulting this person I am only stating a fact that they are stupid” when the underlying emotion is clearly a insult in a cultural sense. However the literal understanding is neutral in a vacuum. This makes a lot of people egocentric, condescending and sometimes assholes, despite being progressives, egalitarians, scientists and religious leaders, like yes ultimately they can be good or neutral on paper, in a very literal logical and way, but their motivations, interactions and impact plays a game of innuendo, underlying thoughts : motivations that is human and emotional.
In this case she was condescending, and condescending is a great example because it is like implicit racial discrimination and gaslighting, it is very hard to prove and you may even be wrong in certain instances, which only helps their case… And when you try to explain it to someone they can easily deny it and make you out to be crazy. You may be right and tell the truth, but it ultimately dies with you as you are less able to express it convincingly. I feel like it’s a common plight as an infp. I can feel misunderstood in such moments because that level of analysis, amongst many, are hard to address and resolve..
Especially if you’re talking about tone, choice of words that are actually neutral in a literal sense yet not in a cultural / informal way… I guess this is an issue I’ve often had as an infp. How do I navigate this and get someone to understand how they hurt me or how I hurt them? Especially when it goes beyond the literal and lies in the implicit and small details… like emotional abuse, implicit racism, gaslighting or neglect…
She kept denying that anything she said could have upset me and would say in a mocking way “oh so you’re upset about me telling you this one simple thing,” which again hides behind the literal and twists my statement. Easily something I would forgive but it’s hard when everything you say is being attacked and distorted before you can explain.
Anyway I’d love to know your thoughts and experiences with this. Being upset at this clearly isn’t strictly an Infp thing at all, but I do think we are burdened with empathy. We can’t let anything go and we want things to be fair. We want to understand, work through and change people and genuinely resolve issues.
Sorry if some of this doesn’t apply to every infp to the same degree I am speaking generally.

For context I’m 19F, in my second year at university
A year ago, a great part of my then friend group built an organization at my school, and left me along with a couple others out of it. I didn’t fight to get in, but a few of my friends who did ended up part of the organization. I figured if they’d wanted me there I wouldn’t have had to fight for it, they would have invited me. Not even sure I would’ve managed to get in if I had fought.
As a result I lost a lot of friends as they all became closer to each other through this organization. I was left out of outings, birthdays etc until it became clear I wasn’t part of the group anymore.
I still have a few friends I love and for who it doesn’t matter whether I’m « part » of this organization or not. But I’m not one of the main friends anymore, I’m on the periphery, nobody is bothered when I join outings but no one cares to invite me either.
I was so embarrassed at how many friends I’d lost this year that I didn’t want to have a birthday party, even though my real friends would definitely have loved that, I just didn’t want to accept how little « real friends » I had left. Especially since they all have more friends than me..
So now I’m an unconfident mess, and this has been reflecting on my dating life and schoolwork as well.
I started dating almost a year ago, after the « exclusion » from my friend group. I’ve been non stop getting attached too quickly, to the wrong people even. I got in a relationship with a guy who I knew I wasn’t compatible with, just because I was scared he’d leave (and he did leave). And now I’m obsessed with this new guy I’m seeing and terrified he’s gonna ghost me even though he isn’t what I’m looking for long term either. There’s been two other similar stories as well.
At school I haven’t been doing badly but definitely under my capacities. I know I can do better.. I procrastinate a ton, I believe I’m terrible at everything I do even though I’m studying something I genuinely love. I waste days and days feeling sorry for myself while scrolling on my phone…
I feel lonely and unconfident, unwanted and like nobody would understand my thoughts. Some days I’m happy and everything is fine, I get motivation, read a nice book, run, see friends, work and I feel great. But everytime I feel like I’m feeling better reality ends up catching up, it’s been a never ending cycle for over a year now, and I’m tired of it.
Even my therapist doesn’t understand, he thinks I’m fine but I don’t feel fine. I feel cut out from the world, like everytime i want to express my feelings no one really listens. I just want to wait for someone to come and save me but I know I have to do that myself. I feel like I could change and do better if I just decided to. Like it’s that simple. But I don’t change, I’m stuck, I’m too weak.

As a collection of like minded individuals we must start completely ignoring the existence of the masses (I.E women, inbreds). And not in a superficial way, we shouldn’t disagree with them, we shouldn’t look at them and we certainly shouldn’t talk to them. They simply shouldn’t have any existence within our minds and then, I am convinced of this, “they” will simply cease to exist.
I am not perfect, perfection is something we must move toward. But because I am not perfect I feel myself ponder the idiocy of others. Or trying to explain my position to women. I am going to stop this. I don’t need to explain myself any more.
For a long time I DIDN’T believe truth and objectivity was possible. Clarity was an impossibility.
You don’t believe in truth? you don’t know what truth is? You cannot define truth? questions like this plagued my mind for hours, teachers in school affirmed these thoughts. I was young and Impressionable. I’m not perfect.
You can define truth. Ignore the intellectualism, ignore the thoughts of others, ignore your environment. You are truth, everything you believe is the truth. The world and people around you demand you to view things through endless layers of nuance, you don’t need it. People believe that a greater depth of understanding is equal to intelligence. That being an “expert” is a good thing. It is not, you will only yearn for more. I have yet to meet a professional or expert I respect, they are shackled to their field of knowledge. Unable or unwilling to view things from a broader more truthful perspective.
Looking at things through the lens of collective groups or definitions is also reductive. The “haves” and “have nots” are arbitrary distinction. I can harp on for hours about how the modern age strips meaning from us, refusing to allow us to view things from our own perspective. Being the critic is easy, finding an alternative is hard. That is what my father says.
So here is alternative, lift weights and dominate others. Physically and mentally. Your will is the most important thing, disregard morals, they box you in. Others will try and box you in, why? You ask, I say, disregard their motives. It is not important to know others unless you, personally, deem them of value.
These concepts; equality, post modernity, ideas, consciousness. Waste of time. Strive for excellence, strive for intelligence. They hate that I disagree, they say I am morally bankrupt, they say I live a deeply sad life. Either are true, I feel stronger, I’m happier than ever. What you feel is important, your emotions are important. Base your morals off your emotions.
They created industrial war, it is no longer an art. The 20th century told us one thing, humans want to kill each and strip each other from history. Everything is driven by profit, stand against profit for it is how they control you, shackle you to community. To the collective. Money and success is not valued by the number you have in your bank account. Actually the number in your bank account is directly correlated to have much of yourself you’ve given away. How you have betrayed yourself. Given in.
Success is happiness, and I am happy.
David foster Wallace once said that
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on”
once I heard this quote I’d decided to value nothing. But I think I misunderstood the idea behind Wallace’s words. I am not perfect. Maybe you shouldn’t worship anything. Or maybe you should worship yourself, in totality. For you, the individual, is already perfect. I don’t agree with Wallace on everything, but unlike the people today he thought about things. Had original ideas, not the endless pseudo-intellectual rehashing and slight modification of ideas that have floated through the collective ethos for years. You already know everything you need to know to live this very moment, and that is all that matters.
But the truth is I want it all, yet I am told that I shouldn’t do that. Accept my weakness, let go of my childlike desires. They say; “truth is unobtainable and perfection is unobtainable”. And do you know who says that, ugly people. They shouldn’t have an opinion anyway.

ive posted this on many places so it may mention things that wont make sense
I am 15 years old in year 10 (9th grade), my dream has always been to work with animals but i've never been sure id make it. I've been depressed, dealing with selective mutism and a lot of mental health issues including suicidal ideation for the majority of my life. I never planned on getting better, ever doing my GCSE's/attending college but now thats changed. I kind of have a plan, i know what GCSE grades i need, what college to go to and when in university to study zoology however due to the fact i am still struggling with my issues it has caused me a great amount of memory loss, constantly being tired and overly anxious unable to concentrate i have missed YEARS of learning by not being entirely there mentally. I am trying to get back on medication and back into therapy, what i need to know if anyone in veterinary care understands? were you always good at school, getting amazing grades or did you struggle? feel like a massive idiot? but managed to learn and remember things? obviously you go to school for years to learn everything you need to but rn its impossible for me to pass. I need Grade 7 biology, physics and chemistry along with maths, english and a couple others. I have a year (im aware i could always do my GCSE's years from now but id like to get my life sorted cuz currently i feel i dont have years left of my life). I'll be doing them around May 2025, do you have any tips or advice for me? how to study, what to do to look after myself and etc? im not looking for mental health help, i js feel alone in this. Was it always easy? as a child were you amazing at science. I feel i am meant to be working with animals, id love to save them especially wild animals but it feels impossible, i need hope and motivation to get me through this. Not only for me to stay alive and fight through my struggles but so many animals need help and it'd give me purpose knowing i have a chance to save them. I hope this makes sense. Thank you !!

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A Brief Review of Trails into Reverie: Act One- Lost Freedom and Plans Laid byu/ACertainThrowawayTag inFalcom

Introduction- In this review, I will indicate where Rean and C's sections (C Section???) overlap, as they each share some really cool elements. Outside of that, pretty interesting Acts! Obviously you have the True Reverie Corridor, which I'll touch on briefly, but mostly won't mention unless there's anything in particular that's cool about it, and whose content I will mostly be reviewing in my separate review series about the Daydreams, which doesn't have enough content to be mentioned just yet.
Lloyd's act was probably my least favourite, it had some really sweet moments, especially Lloyd's pain right at the start of the act, as well as Lechter's appearance, but for the most part I think it has some pretty major issues which I'll go into more in the pros and cons. Rean's act was pretty standard fare for what we're used to with Class 7, nothing revolutionary there, but it was C's act that stands out for both its comedy and light nature, as well as the way it ties into Rean's act and makes it better as a result. Anyway, lets get into some specifics.
Pros (Lloyd's Route)- -The Opening Scenes The emotional impact of seeing Lloyd beat down and bedridden after the end of Act One, as well as Rixia's concern, and his foolhardy stubbornness in the face of everything that just happened was quite something. It really did remind me of how his character was during his best bits in Azure. Shame it kind of faded as the Act went on.
-Lechter Like with Claire, the fact that Lechter is one of the first people to rejoin your party after everything (ESPECIALLY given what's going on, and what he did to the SSS during Cold Steel 3 for example) is a really clever move in my opinion, and it adds a different dynamic to the party. That and he's just really cool here, kind of regaining his aloof but clued in schtick that he had in the original Crossbell games.
-Rixia Unlike Elie, whose emotional beats don't really hit (but that's an issue with her character as a whole), Rixia's emotion at the end of this act, as well as throughout it are just pretty well done. Not the best writing the series has seen, but it's consistent with her character, and adds some weight and emotional gravity that quite frankly wouldn't exist otherwise.
Cons (Lloyd's Route)- -Cao and Heiyue God I can't emphasise how much I hate Cao fucking Lee. Of all the 'all according' to plan characters he's by far the worst. Gets his shit kicked in every time, his plans never fully work, and then he fucks back off into the shadows. I appreciate morally grey characters, and scheming characters, if they're done well, and Cao is far from done well here.
-Ilya (and Shanshan as well I guess) Why? What does this do? Like sure I getting her dance hypnotises the population but why is this the story beat they decided to use here? More to the point why is Ilya the character at the heart of the plot beat? It all just feels a bit weak tbh. Also as much as I loved Rixia's appearance here, the stuff with Shanshan was just weak lmao I'm sorry.
Pros (Rean's Route)- -The investigation of Heimdallr It was great to be back in the old Eastern Districts we hadn't seen since CS1. Just seeing the old sights and going round the old places again really worked somehow. Kind of makes me wish we got more of the old CS12 cities like Bareahard and Roer. Hell, I'd love to have seen Celdic again. But I understand that probably wouldn't work for CS34 and Reverie.
-Millium and Altina Man I've missed these two. Their character relationship has certainly evolved since CS2 and early CS3, however it feels natural (to an extent), and it's just such a blast seeing them finally able to talk to each other as 'family' after all the stuff that happened in CS4. The bit with Millium figuring out how Lapis and Nadia were moving across the city because she also happens to be a massive foodie was great as well.
-The Big Reveal This goes for both Rean and C's routes, but the way the big reveal actually happened was brilliant. Jusis being the one to land the 'demasking' blow, Rufus showing his usual cunning, the demonstration of how far he can plan ahead when his back is against the wall, to just the atmosphere of the situation. Really well done in terms of the build up, reveal, and the events afterwards.
Cons (Rean's Route)- -Rean's party doesn't really do anything Sure they did do investigation things, but most of the time they were either being strung along by C or not being able to do much of anything due to plot reasons. I wanted to see them do at least a little bit of something for themselves before C's machinations started to kick in. Eh, could've been worse.
Pros (C's Route)- -Swin, Nadia, and Lapis These three are some of the most refreshing characters from the series in a while. Their comedic dynamic and overall vibe feels closer to something out of Sky than anything we've gotten since somehow, and overall they just feel very different in both comedic style and character dynamic compared to the Cold Steel and Zero/Azure casts. It's a change in writing style that at this stage is more than welcome.
-The Interplay This game has so far done all of its sequence breaking right. You start of thinking you're doing a pretty standard multi character story, but then the TRC happens. And with C and Rean's route, the full potential of a multi perspective story is realised almost completely. From each team fighting each other, to each team influencing the other's actions across the course of the story, to the sheer novelty of what's happening, I think this part of the game is downright genius and one of the best things the writers have done in terms of game design since the isometric games.
-Rufus An enigma even when you're playing as him, the fact he's one of the main characters is fascinating, and I really like how it pulls the rug from under you. I've heard a lot of people thought it might've been Cedric before the reveal, but honestly I think this is so much cooler.
Cons (C's Route)- -Under Heimdallr I like underground sewer levels when they're done right but I'm really tired of them at this point, drab scenery with not much else to do other than follow the straight path that you might need to deviate from to grab a chest or flip a switch, and then right back. The scenery is dull, the travelling is dull, the only real motivation here is that you have to do it to advance the main story. If these levels come up again in Calvard, I really hope they've revamped them into something a little more unique.
Conclusion- This is a really promising start. The TRC was great, a somewhat different area for the different casts to interact, and for the various Daydreams to be accessed. This is definitely an upgrade on Sky the 3rd. My one complaint is that the end to Lloyd's act two isn't... great... but it's okay enough that I can just let it exist and move on. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading, and I'll see you after Act Three! Or whenever I view my 5th Daydream because I'll be posting a separate review for that.

I am a guy who had relapsed after a 90 days of nofap, a few months ago. Once the streak was broken the demons which I thought had gone forever returned stronger than ever. Since then, it had been a constant cycle of relapse and minor streaks. Many of you here would be familiar with how it feels whenever you try to resist an urge. Mind keeps saying, 'one last time, plsss' and you would try to reason with it, which often results in the mind's victory and hence a relapse. You try to bring up an argument or a reason as to why you shouldn't do it next time which is almost always defeated by mind's 'it will be the last time' excuse.
Frustrating. It pulls you into a constant loop of sadness, regret and at the same a fear that you will never go back to that 'improvement phase' (if you have got a good streak before).
I will tell you how I managed to beat it. So after a relapse, I was reflecting myself on where I went wrong. I was trying to convince my mind over and over that I must not break the streak again. But... Inwardly I felt hopeless. I felt like I wasn't communicating with my mind in the correct way, you know maybe not giving it a proper reason to quit porn addiction and go nofap. So I watched some podcasts on nofap. I learned something about how our mind works during an addiction from Dr.K's lectures. I realised that communication with mind is much more important than I thought. Perhaps my library would have...
Coincidentally it was the day I had to return my book. So, I went to library in search for a book on human brain, addictions or something that would help me communicate with it properly?
It's here, it's inside here
My mind kept telling me.
And the first thing which caught my eye was a book with a brain's picture. A blue-black coloured book.
'Telepsychics Tapping your Hidden Subconscious powers'
By Dr Joseph Murphy.
I know his name might be familiar to you. He is the author of 'The power of your subconscious mind'.
This is his lesser known book. I read the back for a bit, uninterested, because it wasn't time for playing with Telekinesis(for some reason that's how I read the title of the book) when I wanted to quit porn addiction. I read a few lines of the back and thought, 'Yep. Totally another superstitious book.'
I kept it back into the rack and realised that I had misread the title. So I read a random page inside to see what Telepsychics is and under a points to remember section it read:
'Telepsychics means communication with your psyche...'
... Jackpot.
Mind was telling me,
This is it. This is the answer.
I borrowed the book and I will be honest here. I couldn't read it for some days due to some prior engagements but when I finally did, everything changed.
Everything made so much sense. What it destroyed was my false image of God, whom I thought to be a man up in the skies watching over us. The author is Christian hence there are some Pslams and other quotes, here and there in the book. I am not a Christian but I understood what he was trying to convey.
We all have failed to reason with mind because our target itself it wrong.
What we should have focused on was our subconscious mind not the conscious mind.
Following this book, I crafted my own prayer which I read three times in the morning after waking up and three times before I turn in at night.
Now today, I am back to that 'improvement mode' again, people. Something which seemed impossible before.
'Prayer is nothing more than communication with your subconscious mind.'
Hence, I suggest you to make one tailored for you, for your circumstances and based on what you want. I use an image of myself celebrating no fap after 1000 days, when I say the corresponding prayer line.
Brothers and Sisters who are all trying to break out of the loop, please give this old book a try. I know this post is very long but I felt like I should help you people who are trying hard everyday to become a nofap, a formula.
The reason the tag is 'victory' is not because of the current streak. But just the fact that I got back to 'I'm moving towards my best self' phase.
PS: The reason some of you have never experienced that phase is because you might have applied improvement to your porn addiction situation only. As a guy, it feels best if you wrap your life around a purpose you love and want to work for everyday. Maybe try improving more areas of your life during your streak to understand what I am saying about the 'feel good' improvement phase. I am not saying you will attract 100 women everywhere you go 💔 but it will feel better to connect with people when you are in that phase. You feel good interacting with someone because you feel positive, motivated and at peace. People often reflect all that positiveness back at you. I think that's all this confidence theory you hear from no fap journey is all about. I will tell you a story of a daring thing I did during my earlier 90 days which is kind of similar to the exaggerated results people tell you. That is if anyone wishes me to tell it 😅(fat chance).
For those who read it till here. Have a great day! All my blessings to you!